Wired

by Ilse Genovese

Like most people, I‘m wired into the wireless world. The cell phone is my best friend I would not leave home without, and my computer is getting smaller and connectable from anywhere. more >>

What Sputnik launched

by Charles Krauthammer

Fifty years ago this month, America was shaken out of technological complacency by a beeping 180-pound aluminum ball orbiting overhead. Sputnik was a shock because we had always assumed that Russia was nothing but a big, lumbering bear. more>>

Fragile Planet

by Philip Kennicott

Since the first pictures of the Earth were taken from outside its atmosphere by a camera on a V-2 rocket launched in 1946 there has been something uncanny about looking at our planet from on high. more >>

Geoweb: The world on your desktop

the economist

“EARTH materializes, rotating majestically in front of his face. Hiro reaches out and grabs it. He twists it around so he's looking at Oregon. Tells it to get rid of the clouds, and it does, giving him a crystalline view of the mountains and the seashore.” That vision from Neal Stephenson's “Snow Crash,” a science-fiction novel published in 1992, aptly describes Google Earth, a computer program that lets users fly over a detailed photographic map of the world. more>>

Place, context ... and romance

by michael jones

Guiding my childhood writing efforts, my father—a journalist by training—taught me to respect the five w's: who, what, where, when, and why. “These questions,” he insisted, “must be answered before other details are introduced.” Why? “Because that is how you earn the reader's attention!”

Georeferencing surveys for spatial integration within an enterprise GIS

by robert jones

National Survey & Engineering has conducted three years of extensive research and development on how to feasibly georeference surveys to the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS) with survey-grade accuracy. The research and development is part of an ongoing effort to spatially integrate surveys within an enterprise GIS, as discussed in a prior article published in the February 2007 issue of ACSM Bulletin.

From disaster prone to disaster prepared

by joanne castagna

As students begin a new semester at Louisiana State University, the school takes a new course to keep their college community safe from future hurricanes, with the assistance of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

ACSM JGAC semi-annual report

by laurence socci, the c.l.a. group

This month’s “From the Hill” column contains the JGAC Semi-Annual Report, which discusses all of the issues we’ve been working on. Be sure to read the Government Affairs Updates each month to learn more about each of these issues.

Aiming for success in surveying
management—#2

by richard a. smith

In my first column regarding surveying management success, appearing in ACSM Bulletin #227, I emphasized the importance of helping others in your company because “the more you help others, the more you do to help yourself and your engineering firm.” Here I want to emphasize a second success tactic which reflects that same philosophy of helping others to help all—take steps to include as many employees as possible in the company’s decision-making process. Make this a part of your management style.

“The Earth itself needs an advocate—”

by david fahrenthold

Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, led to the banning of the pesticide DDT and the launch of modern environmentalism as we know it today. In the greater Washington D.C. region, Carson’s name has been given to two schools, a park, and a hiking trail—and she was one of the six scientists recognized in a NOAA’s Ark of Treasures exhibit.

Hot prognostigations

by ilse genovese

For two years now, I have been following the climate debate. Like the climate, the debate is cyclical—it heats up during a drought or after a particularly nasty hurricane, and it cools off once the alarmists and their detractors find other fires to stoke. But, cyclical or not, something’s happening on, above, and within our Earth, and not finding out what exactly it is that’s happening would not serve us well—in terms of our future wellbeing. more >>